Last Modified: Friday, November 9, 2012 at 2:42 p.m.

The ongoing construction at Feld Entertainment's new headquarters for producing its circus, ice and monster truck shows, and eventually its corporate offices.

Staff Photo by Thomas Bender

Circus folk are coming to town.

Feld Entertainment's $20 million-plus rehabilitation of the 575,000-square-foot plant — where the company that owns Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus will bring its worldwide production headquarters and possibly more — is moving at a brisk pace.

Work hit a high-point in August, when a construction crew of more than 400 was on site. A first phase of the buildout is set to be finished early next year.

Soon, Feld will begin customizing the site as a precursor to eventually bringing 235 jobs to the region.

Casey Rodgers, Feld's vice president of finance and strategic planning, looks at the blank exterior walls and imagines them capturing the attention of company owner Kenneth Feld.

"It's a canvas," Rodgers said, looking at one of the structures. "We have a flair our owner will exercise."

For Ringling, which had its winter headquarters in Sarasota beginning in 1927 and then in Venice from 1959 to 1989, the move to Manatee County is something of a homecoming. Feld's father, Irvin Feld, bought the circus in 1967, and Feld Entertainment has operated it since then.

Economic coup

Besides putting a dash of color on what was Southwest Florida's largest vacant building, landing Feld represents the largest in a series of economic development coups in recent years for Manatee County.

Sun Hydraulics committed earlier this year to building a new plant that could add roughly 360 new jobs within the next five years.

Most recently, the county announced that JRL Enterprises Inc., a Cape Coral-based designer and maker of large molds for boats, amusement park rides, waterslides and spacecraft, would buy the derelict Wellcraft Marine complex — the region's largest vacant industrial space. JRL is slated to create 80 jobs in southern Manatee within the next three years when it revives the former boat builder's plant, empty since 2008.

"Besides the jobs, the community needs to attract businesses and larger businesses," said Manatee County Administrator Ed Hunzeker, adding that Feld could help accomplish that with its national reputation.

Tourist attraction?

Feld's 46-acre site, just north of the Manatee River in the former Palmetto Corporate Center, also might become a bit of a tourist attraction.

At the entrance to the offices under construction will be "The History Hall," expected to include circus memorabilia, such as a display of the contract between John Ringling North and Irvin Feld.

Eventually, the company expects to have both the production of its sets and rehearsals within the building, which has a slightly larger footprint than NASA's famously large Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center.

Shows expected to rehearse there next year will include Disney on Ice and Nuclear Cowboys, and possibly the "Gold" circus, the smallest of the circus shows. By 2014, Rodgers, the finance vice president, expects the building will be ready to accommodate even the largest of the train-transported circus shows.

Pointing down a 700-foot-long bay, one of eight at the former plant, Rodgers gives an idea of how quickly parts of the building will be filled.

"Next summer we'll be filled with monster trucks, 28 of them," he said.

The next bay over is where stages for arena, theater and stadium shows will be built and assembled. It is a business that Feld hopes to expand by constructing sets and stages for shows put on by other companies.

In the biggest bay, where the ceiling is 80 feet high, trapeze artists and other high-flying acts will rehearse. The space will contain performer dressing rooms, as well.

Corporate headquarters

Ultimately, the renovation will enable Feld to move corporate office workers from its Vienna, Va., headquarters. The company also intends to consolidate production operations from Poplar Branch, N.C., and Palmetto.

Manatee County government and the state invested $3.1 million to attract Feld, part of its efforts to lure well-known corporate headquarters and promote itself as a sports and tourism destination.

"We as a region aren't known necessarily for Fortune 500 or 100 firms, but in my experience, the next CEO always wants to talk to the last person who moved into town. So Mr. Feld is going to get a new role," said Hunzeker, the Manatee County administrator.

Feld's new quarters also features a recording studio because the company's acts often record much of their own music. There also is a costume warehouse, a railcar recycling center to repair Ringling's 110 railcars, and storage for things like Feld's 13 portable ice rinks.

Eventually, Feld might add a fitness center and possibly a mill shop.

For now, frames for offices and walls are partly complete, and much of the work in the three-story building focuses on drywalling. Ken Feld's office, too, is still under construction.

The company's plan calls for a five-year transition to move all of its production operations and its headquarters, but Rodgers said the move is ahead of schedule, and may not take that long.

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